Ron Chepesiuk

Jan. 16, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine:

  This is an excerpt from the book, Queenpins: Notorious Women Gangsters from the Modern Era, by Ron Chepesiuk. The book is published by Strategic Media Books (www.strategicmediabooks.com) and is available from the web site, Amazon.com and other publishing outlets.       

by Ron Chepesiuk

In 1912, Pearl Adler, a 12-year old girl from the small village of Yanow, Russia, embarked on a long, perilous oceanic journey. For support, the young girl, whom her family called “Polly,” had nothing more with her than the high expectations of her large family and a potato sack that contained her belongings, some garlic, apples, four loaves of black bread and four hunks of salami that her mother Gertrude had packed for her. Joining Polly on board the good ship Naftar was a diverse mix of Poles, Italians, Danes and Swedes, all determined to make a prosperous new life for themselves in the Promised Land of America. It was a rough voyage and nearly all the passengers got sick, but not Polly. No sickness was going to impede her determination to reach America.

Unlike many of her fellow passengers, Polly did not leave a life of abject poverty. She was the eldest child in a family that included two daughters and seven sons. But her father, Morris Adler, was a tailor, a respectable occupation, and the family was well-off by Yanow standards. Still, the family’s ethnic roots were Jewish and it was a time of virulent anti Semitism in Russia. The Adler family could be a victim of a pogrom, or violent attack, at any time. It had happened frequently between 1903 and 1905. In the course of one week alone, there had been 50 anti-Jewish pogroms. In the village of Binlystok, for instance, 19 Jews were murdered and 24 injured. The Kishinew pogram left 120 dead and 500 injured, while the Odessa pogrom had 299 victims.

Until the pogroms, Morris Adler’s plan for Polly was to have her attend school in a nearby village and then complete her education under the village Rabbi’s guidance. Given the insecurities of life in Russia, the father decided that she would be the first link in a line of emigration that would bring his family to America.

July 6, 2011 Special to Crime Magazine 

This is an excerpt from the book, Straight from the Hood: Amazing but True Gangster Tales, by Ron Chepesiuk and Scott Wilson. The book is published by Strategic Media Books (www.strategicmediabooks.com) and is available from the web site, Amazon.com and other publishing outlets.

by Ron Chepesiuk and Scott Wilson

 Al “Scarface” Capone—Impresario to Chicago’s Black Musicians  

The Federal Government closed Storyville down in 1917 during World War I over the objections of New Orleans’s city hall, claiming that the district was a threat to national security. In reality, many Americans of the early 20th century were not comfortable with what they heard about Storyville. For them, it was an integrated den of sin, which, as one New Orleans guidebook explained; “held out the allure of sex across color lines, even though segregation legislation was passed in New Orleans in 1894.”

With Storyville’s closure, New Orleans’ jazz musicians had to find work, so many of them joined the flood of black migrants from the south and ended up in Chicago, the Windy City, making the metropolis America’s jazz capitol and one of the country’s most exciting cities of the 1920s. The nightlife came with gambling, alcohol and prostitution. Gangsters often owned the clubs and nightclubs in the Black Belt, and as Walter Reckless, the author of Vice in Chicago, noted: “They were important links in the chain of beer running operations conducted by different gangs.”

June, 15, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book, Sergeant Smack, The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson., Kingpin, and his Band of Brothers. (www.ikeatkinsonkingpin.com)

by Ron Chepesiuk

PROLOGUE

December 9, 1972—It was to be a routine flight, one of dozens the retired U.S. Army Master Sergeant had taken since 1966 when he first arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. Given the colorful nickname “Sergeant Smack” by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 47-year old Leslie “Ike” Atkinson, the squat retired U.S. Army master sergeant, was dressed appropriately for the long flight to the U.S. mainland: khaki pants, casual loafers and a loose white short-sleeve sports shirt. With his short-cropped curly black hair and military bearing, Atkinson looked like one of the scores of American servicemen, active and retired, black and white, who came to Bangkok in search of romance and excitement.

With Atkinson in the black Mercedes that sped through the chaotic streets of Bangkok was 30-year-old Thomas Southerland, a friend and fellow African American from Wilmington, North Carolina, whom Atkinson had known for nearly a decade. Like his companion, the trim, tight-lipped Southerland, or Sonny, as friends knew him, was a gambler—a card shark and hustler—and, their paths had crossed often in the numerous craps and poker games common in the black communities of eastern North Carolina. Southerland had visited Bangkok frequently, and over time Atkinson had become almost like an older brother to him.

Relaxing in the car, Ike assessed Southerland and could not help but admire what he saw. Fitted resplendent in an Army uniform complete with battle and service ribbons, Sonny looked like a war hero. He carried a military card that identified his rank as sergeant. His special orders explained that he had served a 12-year hitch in the Army, and they instructed anyone reading the orders to please accord all privileges worthy of such service. In reality, Southerland’s orders were totally bogus, forged by Atkinson himself, who, as a retired 20-year service veteran, knew the military system inside and out. His “privileges” made obtaining military uniforms, NCO stripes and badges as easy as shopping for groceries.

Forging IDs was so easy to do, in fact, that Atkinson did it himself in the comfort of his bungalow on a klong (a small canal), located in the heart of Bangkok. Southerland could spend several years in prison for impersonating a U.S. military non-commissioned officer; it was a serious criminal offense. But he looked confident; after all, he had performed this role before—as a courier, carrying heroin in the standard army AWOL bags. Specifically designed for military travel, the bags looked like gym bags, except that they folded out like an accordion and contained hidden pockets. The false bottom of the AWOL bag had been stitched and fitted to carry two kilos each of a potent type of heroin commonly known on the “street” as “China White.”

April 18, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine

This is an excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s book: The Trafficantes: Godfathers from Tampa, Florida: The Mafia, the CIA and the JFK Assassination. The book is available for purchase from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and www.ronchepesiuk.com.

by Ron Chepesiuk

When the Mob put a $100,000 contract on his life, Joe Valachi decided to tell all to the authorities, and in 1962 he turned informant. Valachi became one of the most valuable federal witnesses ever, compelling the U.S. government to put Valachi in the Federal Witness Protection program and to guard him with up to 200 U.S. marshals.

In his nationally televised appearance before the McClellan Committee in 1963, Valachi formally identified 317 organized crime members, including Santo Trafficante. During the hearings, Trafficante’s photo appeared at the top of a chart depicting the organizational structure of the Tampa crime family. Santo liked to keep a low profile, but the American public now knew him as one of the country’s most important mobsters.

September 7, 2007

Salvatore Giancana

by Ron Chepesiuk

Editor's Note: "Policy" is a form of lottery in which a ticket is purchased and numbers selected, with the winning numbers announced at a drawing. No one knows for sure how the policy game began, but the Sixteenth century European countries were using the lottery to raise money for the state. In the United States, Virginia first introduced a lottery game in the Seventeenth century, and it spread across the country during the next century.

The policy game first appeared in the 1880s in New Orleans, and then spread to New York, Chicago and other cities with large African-American populations. Some historians believe that the name "policy" derives from the practice of blacks playing the game with money meant for insurance policies.

In the policy game, 78 numbers (1 to 78) are wrapped in special containers and dropped in a drum-shaped container or "wheel" from which numbers are drawn. The player selects a certain amount of numbers, the most common being three numbers, or a "gig," betting that the combination of numbers chosen will "fall" or win in the next drawing of winning numbers. The policy operator was known as a "banker" and the games they ran as "banks."

Once back on the streets, Sam "Mooney" Giancana wasted no time pursuing his take over plan for the Black Belt policy racket. He followed up on Ed Jones's jailhouse offer to help set him up in policy and arranged a meeting with Ed's brother, George, at the family's Ben Franklin store. The following evening, he met with Paul Ricca and Jake Guzik, two leading members of The Outfit, Chicago's powerful white mafia.

Giancana was confident that the mob bosses would see the light. "Once those guys see there's money in this. Money…big money…Well, shit. I'll be on my way," Sam told his brother Chuck.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Ricca and Guzik were part of the so called "Big Six" who ruled The Outfit. The other heavyweight godfathers included Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman. As a young and ambitious gangster, Guzik developed a close relationship with Al Capone, who came to depend on him while organizing the Chicago underworld. Guzik was the Chicago mob's financial wizard for nearly two decades, and his role in arranging payoffs to police and politicians was so valuable that his mob colleagues nicknamed him the "Greasy Thumb."

February 20, 2007

Frank Mathews

by Ron Chepesiuk

 In May of 1969, detective Joe Kowalski, a seven-year veteran with the New York Police Department, was living at 130 Clarkson Avenue in a quiet, low-to-middle income neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, the apartment building's parking lot began to look like a luxury car sales lot, as people began streaming into the building at all hours of the day to see a new resident who had moved into a three-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor. "I didn't like him the first time I saw him," Kowalski recalled in reference to his new neighbor. "He was loud and flashy, drove fancy cars and had no visible means of support. His friends would block the driveway with their cars and park in other people's parking spaces. Some of them carried paper bags that looked as if they might contain money. As a cop, I knew I needed to pay attention to them."

Kowalski put the new neighbor and his visitors under surveillance and began taking down license plate numbers. As a detective in the NYPD's Intelligence Division, Kowalski had no problem doing background checks. When he put the license plate numbers through Motor Vehicles, he was not surprised to learn that many of the cars were registered to known drug dealers living not just in the Big Apple but also in cities throughout the eastern U.S., including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, and in Durham, N.C.